Solon (3.3-3.4)

And he seems to have composed his poetry at first with no serious end in view, but as amusement and diversion in his hours of leisure. Then later, he put philosophic maxims into verse, and interwove many political teachings in his poems, not simply to record and transmit them, but because they contained justifications of his acts, and sometimes exhortations, admonitions, and rebukes for the Athenians.

Some say, too, that he attempted to reduce his laws to heroic verse before he published them, and they give us this introduction to them:—

First let us offer prayers to Zeus, the royal son of Cronus,

That he may give these laws of ours success and fame.